From sweet peaches to sour pickles, humans enjoy eating because of tongue receptors that detect the taste of food.

Now, a new study has revealed that the tongue not only picks up the taste of food, it can actually also smell odors.

Here's How The Tongue Can Smell Odors

A team of researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia studied geneticially modified mice to determine the location of olfactory receptors and found that these receptors do turn up on taste cells.

The research team then turned to human taste cells and found that these taste cells contain proteins which are known to be important in other cells that can detect odors.

In fact, human taste cells do respond to fragrances, such as the smell of a clove-scented compound called eugenol, even though the concentration of these substances was below the necessary level to trigger a taste response.

There is also evidence that taste cells bear both taste and odor receptors that interact with similar molecules, which backs up the idea that signals from taste and odor receptors interact with each other.

Add Odors To Food To Urge People To Eat Healthier

The findings of the study, which have been issued in the journal Chemical Senses, question the idea that the brain detects the taste of food and its odor separately in the mouth and nose respectively, and that the taste and odor only combine in the brain to produce the impression of flavor.

The study explains that odor molecules might trigger a response in the mouth. Still, researchers stressed that the results of the study do not undermine the importance or the role of the nose in picking up odors.

"I am not saying that [if you] open your mouth, you smell," said Dr. Mehmet Hakan Ozdener, the lead researcher of the study.

He explained that the findings open up the possibility of using odors to coax people into eating healthier.

For instance, a low concentration of odor could be added to food to make people think that it's sweeter than it really is, which could actually reduce the need for sugar and help tackle the obesity crisis.

Olfactory Receptors Are Not Confined To The Nose

Prof. Charles Spence of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the study, welcomed the findings of the study. However, he said it was too early to talk about it being of help in tackling obesity.

Spence said the study could help unpick some of the unexplained phenomena around taste because there is more to taste than what experts realize.

He added that a past study tackled the fact that people could discriminate food that are only expected to differ by their odors, even when the nose was not involved.

Meanwhile, Prof. Johannes Frasnelli from the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières said that past studies have confirmed that olfactory receptors are not confined to the nose.

Prof. Frasnelli said that olfactory receptors can be found in many other tissues aside from the olfactory mucosa, such as in sperm cells, which seem to play a role in guiding the sperm cell to the egg.

Photo: Bruce Tuten | Flickr